Real LI

Photographer Peter Beard and wife, Nejma, have gone private in their efforts to sell their five-acre Montauk estate, which has been on the market for nearly three years.

The couple have shared the blufftop property for two decades, listing it for sale in 2005 for $32 million with Linda Stein of Prudential Douglas Elliman. Stein was the “agent to the stars” who was murdered in her Manhattan apartment in October 2007. At the time of Stein’s untimely death, the Beards’ property was listed at $26 million. John Golden of Prudential co-listed with Stein.

Nejma Beard tells REAL LI that the estate was taken off the public market on Dec. 1, 2007, but that is indeed still for sale. “There is no hurry,” Beard says. “I am selling through personal contacts only now, and we have quite a lot of interest. However, I only want someone who is not a developer, who will respect the environment and will not despoil it as so many buying in Montauk have done.”

The property has a carriage house and several cabins, and is the last oceanfront parcel before the Montauk Lighthouse. Property records still bear the name of model Cheryl Tiegs, to whom Beard was once married. The Beards' neighbors include musician Paul Simon and J.Crew chief executive Millard Drexler.

Beard declined to provide details on the current asking price. Of her efforts to find the right buyer, she says, "It is a special and magical place ... One can only ever be a guardian to land, one has to respect it and pass it on to like minds. It is a true sanctuary and needs the right people."

According to New York Magazine, murdered real estate agent Linda Stein had been staying in East Hampton at a house paid for by Prudential Douglas Elliman. At the time, she was receiving treatment for a brain tumor. “It was definitely below-grade for Linda,” a friend of Stein's tells the magazine. The house was "on the correct side of the Montauk Highway but with fixtures that looked like they came from Home Depot." She hated that house and would call it "the horrible rental," Robert Kolker writes. "She made the best of it by visiting with new friends like Jamie Drake, the interior designer, whom she asked to fix her up with any eligible men, and old friends like Paul Morrissey, who for several summers loaned her a cottage on the beach at Eothen, his estate in Montauk." She decided that she would go back to Montauk next summer. "It spoke to her of a younger self, one more alive and potent."

Prudential Douglas Elliman's chief sent Linda Stein out to the Hamptons every summer, the East Hampton Star reports. “She was very involved in East Hampton and Amagansett, because she was connected to basically the entertainment business, and a lot of her clients were out there," said Dottie Herman, Prudential's president and chief operating officer of Prudential Douglas Elliman. “I worked out [a plan] with her [that] every year she would be in the Hamptons,” she added. “That was deliberately done.”

According to the newspaper, Stein was a familiar face at Prudential’s Bridgehampton and East Hampton offices. "Her boisterous personality made her popular with the other agents," writes Kate Maier.

She was apparently so devoted to her work that when there was a possibility she had to take some time off in the summer for surgery related to her breast cancer, Herman tells the newspaper, Stein said, "No, no, no, I can’t have it until September. I’ve got to be out in the Hamptons."

Stein used to stay often at Eothen, filmmaker Paul Morrissey's Montauk estate once co-owned with Andy Warhol. A close friend of Morrissey's, Stein sold the estate early this year.

Photo by Bill Cunningham / The New York Times

Yes, it was Linda Stein's assistant, Natavia Lowery, that police say blugeoned the Prudential agent to death. Read about it here.

Apparently Linda Stein hated fellow Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Paul Brennan, so much so that during a hospital stay for breast cancer, as president Dottie Herman visited, she screamed that he should be fired. (Brennan, a senior vice president, is in the Bridgehampton office.) "I can live through my ex-husband," Stein said. "I can live through cancer, but I can't live through Paul Brennan." Or so writes Hamptons author and good friend Steven Gaines in an article this week in the New York Observer about how Stein held grudges against almost everyone, including him. She stopped speaking to him last summer when, on the way out to the Hamptons she told Gaines that she had an inoperable brain tumor, and he said, "Linda, people with brain tumors aren't driving 80 miles and hour in the H.O.V. lane of the Long Island Expressway on the way to their summer rentals." Stein's East Hampton summer rental is where she stayed in 1996, after near-fatal chemotherapy after her second bout with cancer.

Stein, who was found murdered on Halloween in her Manhattan apartment, brokered the deal for the Montauk estate once co-owner by Andy Warhol. Last year, while in Montauk with former associate Raul Garcia Bernal (he had once stayed with Stein in her Amagansett rental, according to the article) she told Gained that he "borrowed her car and tried to pick up pretty girls."

Prudential Douglas Elliman took down Linda Stein's listings, instead posting a memory of her. It reads, "We are filled with sadness that Linda Stein, our colleague for over 20 years, our friend, and an icon in the industry, passed away in the early morning of October 31. She was a bright light who quickly rose to fame once she entered the real estate business and became known as the “Realtor to the Stars”. Linda loved the challenge of working in the competitive housing industry. Described as feisty, talented, charming and relentless, she used her many skills and talents to forge a place in this business like no other. And she made a difference, not only to her customers but to everyone who worked with her. More than anything though, Linda was full of life - and to those who had the pleasure of knowing her personally, she was much loved for her wit and humor. We will miss her terribly and our thoughts are with her family at this very sad time."

Stein represented the Beard estate in Montauk, which the New York Post reported today that she almost closed. "Page Six called Stein a month ago when we heard her $20 million deal to sell photographer Peter Beard's spread in Montauk had fallen through after Beard's wife, Najma, had decided to up the price," according to the paper. "Stein told us she tracked down Beard in Europe to try to make the deal. 'His wife couldn't find him, but I found him,' Linda laughed. But she asked us to not write about it, because she was still hoping to make the sale."

As Newsday's Real Estate section reported in August, Dottie Herman, president and chief executive of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, hosted a fund-raiser tomorrow at her Hamptons home for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential run. It was under Japanese lanterns and a white tent at Herman's five-bedroom Cape Cod that about 75 guests who paid $2,000 each or $3,000 per couple noshed on lobster rolls and corn salad as they listened to a jazz quartet.

And apparently to Linda Stein.

Herman told today's New York Post: "Linda went right up to Clinton and was telling him she had great property for him and that he shouldn't buy from any other broker and 'Nobody's better than me.' And she's giving him her business card and he's trying to give his speech. But that was Linda."

For the latest in her murder investigation, read here.

"The Ramones curse lives on," writes the Gotham City Insider of Prudential Douglas Elliman agent Linda Stein's murder. Or as Hermenautic Circle puts it: "The Ramones curse strikes again."

In a posting titled "Ramones curse claims another life," Tabloid Baby explains, "Joey died of lymphoma in 2001. Dee Dee ODd in 2002. Johnny died in 2004. Pal Legs McNeil's followup to, "Please Kill me," didn't sell all that well. Producer Phil Spector went on trial for murder. Etc. Curse?" The circumstances surrounding Stein's murder, Tabloid Baby muses today, "add a queasy link to the Ramones curse."

Prudential Douglas Elliman agent Linda Stein, who was killed yesterday in her Manhattan apartment, counted photographer Peter Beard among her recent clients.

Beard’s Montauk estate, which includes a carriage house and four rustic cabins, has been on the market since 2005. The five-acre property sits on an 80-foot bluff overlooking the Atlantic. Last year, Prudential’s CEO Dottie Herman told Newsday that it is the last available oceanfront property before the Montauk lighthouse.

The Beard estate is also listed with Prudential’s agent John Golden, who told Newsday today, "Linda and I worked together for years. She was a great broker and passionate about real estate, and she was great at it. She was one of a kind."

Last year, the price on Beard's estate went from from $32 million to $20 million. It is currently listed at $26 million. Beard’s ex-wife, model Cheryl Tiegs, is still listed as owner on property records.

Read it all about it here.